If Wal Mart enters the online music distribution business, it'll use the same techniques, on the record companies, it uses to bludgeon their suppliers into giving them lower prices than anyone else. And I think, as people who are used to the quality of service the iTunes Music Store offers, you should be very worried.
Not too long ago, NPR ran a series about Wal Mart. Apparently, they sell the most dog food out of anyone else in the dog food business. But Purina still cuts them a deal because of the sheer marketshare they control. Rather than the supplier dictating the price of their product, the retailer is.
It's not out of line from my past experience. When I was working for a buying agency in Taiwan, one of the things that was known was that Wal Mart had cut lower deals with the shippers... again, because of their Death Star-caliber market share.
I don't shop at Wal Mart. I don't consider myself a bomb-throwing anarchist, but I don't believe in the way they do business, with forcing out smaller mom-and-pops and that they are fiercly anti-union. I don't like the quality of their goods, the fact that they seem to ram "family values" down the throats of people who *have* to shop there, and frankly, the whole store seems like a cult (with the guy greeting you at the door, the Nuremberg-esque shift cheers and those creepy blue aprons). If you think MS is bad, Wal Mart is the Emperor from Star Wars and Sauron rolled into one big bad enchilada.
But that doesn't mean that everyone thinks like I do. They didn't get to be where they are without a lot of customers. And for whatever my problems are with this company, many of these people don't share them -- for whatever reason, lots of people *like* the fact that they carry "clean" CDs. And with all of those potential customers, they could reshape the online music distribution system and the price structure of hard disc and/or flash-based players. It might not be as user-friendly and it might not be of the same quality, but if history has taught us anything, it's that quality does not necessarily win when compared to cheap (Beta vs. VHS, Mac OS vs. Windows).
Reading the posts, it seems that most of you, as well, also sees the "evilness" of Wal Mart, or at least, it's a shining example as predator of profit by any means necessary. Hell, most of you have Macs, so you're far from Wal Mart's target demo -- what do you think the chances are Wal Mart's going to carry a G5?
For the time being, it seems that Wal Mart's attempts at on-line retailing haven't been very successful. But given their history, it's something that deserves more thought and concern than blowing them off as "evil" and that in the end, it doesn't matter because Cleetus shops there for his Lindows PC.
